The Inside Scoop: Ask Agnes

I decide I am going to stop trying to tell the story of Bilberries Blue Inaugural Microsummit. It hasn’t happened yet. The point of it is the discovery and the making of it. Not the planning and the executing of it.

And then, I get my Saturday Afternoon and the rest of the next 7 Working Days back to enjoy the making of something truly new, and magnificent.

Saturday Afternoon – June 29, 2019

“You have to love it, you know,” I talk to no one in particular.

Whatever it is you find yourself undertaking, you will find that it gets incredibly difficult to sustain if you don’t like the work, and you don’t know the reason for being involved in the work. The people and environment will keep changing, and if it is the people who are the reason for your being a part of that culture and economy, then, your heart will have to be very strong, because people come and go, and so do markets, institutions and economies.

Whatever it is that I love, I have found a way to engage with it. To understand the depth of the mechanics of how it works. I think we find many structures of understanding for bodies of work or knowledge, and we label them, and then they get different degrees of authority and corresponding monetary values being associated with the knowledge.

Knowledge is just really knowing how to do something. If you know how to twirl a pencil, you already have knowledge. If you can share that knowledge, meaning you are able to show someone how to twirl a pencil, and you can do it systematically enough, you have a classroom of pencil twirling learners.

If you then collectively twirl a massive amount of pencils, then you could collectively potentially harvest wind.

You become like a mechanical turbine.

If you know every person whom you have taught to twirl a pencil, like he or she becomes a friend, you have many friends.

How you teach the pencil twirling is up to you. It most likely depends on the person’s interest and reason for twirling pencils.

If a person comes to you because he wants to harvest wind (by twirling pencils) for creating electricity, you would have to say to this very keen learner, I can only twirl pencils.

I Can Only Twirl PencilsPEK with Uncle Ramalingam
Street Entrepreneur since 1959Jalan Panglima, Ipoh, 2019

And humbly make a bid for a collaborative exchange like, “Can you show me how to convert twirling into electricity after I show you how to twirl pencils?”

He might look at you with scrutinising eyes, and say, “OK, but we might need to visit Agnes.”

Then you say, “OK. But I owe her a story.” The real truth is you owe Agnes one story which you can’t spin together, for the life of you, but you don’t tell your electricity collaborator, because he might not be impressed (with you not being able to spin just ONE STORY.)

So you say, “Ask Agnes.”

Hand on LandmowerPhoto of Agnes hand on landmowerSchiedam, Netherlands, 2019

And so both you and your collaborator go to see Agnes.

And then now Agnes gets a bit annoyed, because, we haven’t got the first story, and then a second story starts PoP-Ping up, and Agnes asks him for the electricity story, and looks right at you for twirling pencils when you are supposed to be writing The Story That Unifies It All.

So you try again, and speak again with some kind of a reclaimed innocence, “I was just doing what I love.”

And what I hope to know is really how to twirl it all together.

Agnes says, “What is the relevance?”

I say to Agnes, “Ask him.”

PEK with HarryThinPandamStreet Entrepreneur since June 2019Jalan Panglima, Ipoh, 2019

And then when she asks him, he says, “Ask Aunty Ooi.”

Aunty Ooi80 year old Street Entrepreneur since 1968Stadium, Ipoh, 2019

“Who is she?” asks Agnes.

It looks like someone has turned up to say that she could use the new electricity to charge up her heart.

“Whatever for?” Agnes asks.

Someone pipes up suddenly from nowhere, “So that we can do the stuff we love.”

Agnes frowns and everyone starts to go, “Oh, Oh, You didn’t get the brief?”

“What memo?” Manju turns up, “I just got back in from China.”

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